It’s game four of the series and the Rangers are hoping to even it up. Yesterday the Rangers managed to pull out a win to finally take a game at home. They won 8-0, but their recent slide has cost them the lead in the West. They are now in a deadlocked battle with the Oakland As. Meanwhile, the White Sox are just 2 games out of first place. They are within striking distance and hope to cut the lead down to a single game today.

The White Sox are a slight favorite, but both teams in the minus line wise. The White Sox are -106 and the Rangers are -104. The Over/Under is set high at 10.5. The over is even and the under is -120. In the previous three games, the two teams combined for 11,7 and 8 runs. I am not sure that the pitching tonight lends credit to the 10.5 line. Mark Buehrle is going for the White Sox and John Rheinecker is pitching for the Rangers.

Rheinecker was called up from the minors at the end of last month and he has pitched pretty well. He pitched against these same White Sox just 11 days ago. He was very solid in that appearance—shut them down. He went eight innings, gave up 7 hits, one home run and 2 earned runs. His other 8 inning appearance was against the Mariners. He allowed no runs in that outing.

Buehrle pitched against the Rangers 11 days ago. He allowed 6 runs over 7 innings of work. His last outing was against Cleveland and he went 8 innings, allowing only 2 runs. He has only had 2 outings all year where he allowed over 4 runs (6 and 7). The rest of the outings are all 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4.

This over is possibly too high. When these two pitchers met 11 days ago, Buehrle had an out of character outing. The total runs in that game was 12 (10-2 Texas). It’s hard to believe, given his past performances, Buehrle will have the same type of outing tonight. Rheinecker is showing great stuff, but he is still unproven and facing Texas for the second time. The White Sox hit slightly less against left-handed pitching while the Texas hits better against left-handed pitching.